


The Fallen King of Mount Ishizuchi

by Einzel



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, Rin did not become captain for this, Sousuke fucks up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 18:34:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5596504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Einzel/pseuds/Einzel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sousuke gets lost in the mountains during the annual Samezuka training camp. I’m sure you will have questions, but please never ask a Samezuka student to tell you about the Shikoku Incident. First you will notice the gleam of sweat on their faces, then the nervous shake of their heads as they mumble some threadbare excuse to leave, and before you know it, they will be out of sight. Don’t hurry after them: leave them be. They are still trying to forget.</p><p>This is my submission for the <em>I Saw Many Ships Come Sailing in on Christmas Morning</em> Multiship Christmas Exchange! I could choose between three different prompts, and I chose "Sweat; Yamazaki Sousuke."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fallen King of Mount Ishizuchi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meatball](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball/gifts).



> Merry Christmas to Meatball! I was chosen to be your Secret Santa this year, and I hope that you will enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it! I could only fulfill one of your requests, but I decided to reference your other two prompts as well for a bit of added fun. Have fun reading and god bless!

When Sousuke stopped running at last, alarmed that all sound around him had ceased except for his own ragged breaths rasping in his ears, he found himself perfectly alone, lost among the trees that dappled Mount Ishizuchi.

He furrowed his brow as he cast his glare on the ground in accusation. The thin paths winding serpentine through the slopes of the forest, trodden smooth and barren by countless runners before him, should have converged by now as they had before. For the past minute or so, while he rushed from bend to bend to the sound of rocks and twigs crunching underfoot, he had been expecting Rin’s laughter to ring out any moment to his left and spur Sousuke forward with renewed zeal, but the woods felt devoid of human presence except his own. For all he knew, Rin could have been miles ahead… or below. One backwards glance confirmed that the path Sousuke happened to choose at the last fork gradually steepened into an upward climb, coaxing him higher than he had ever intended to go – and by the looks of the pale strip stretching before him, the path that led him treacherously astray showed no signs of reaching into the clear any time soon.

Sousuke whipped his head around, eyes bulging and fingers shriveling into tense fists by his thighs. A score of trees that once seemed no more than props in a handsome scenery, a mere backdrop for Samezuka’s outdoor training, now loomed over him like an ancient, judgmental mob. Silence trickled in the air like resin from wounded bark, and Sousuke’s skin screamed back in a burst of ice-cold sweat.

 _Not again, not now…_ the words raced through his mind as he lifted two trembling hands to his lips and opened wide, howling into the wilderness,

“ ** _Riiin…!_** _Rin! Where are you?!_ ”

He waited, breath held, teeth clenched, but only the trees cackled in reply, gleaming crimson in the glow of the setting sun that bathed Mount Ishizuchi in hues of blood and fire. Overhead, as if by some infernal design, the burning wool of evening clouds suddenly began to drip, drip, drip across the mountainside, until hot summer rain pelted Sousuke like wet confetti from the bowels of Hell.

“Shit…” he whispered to the creeping darkness that began to weave its tendrils through the forest, crawling ever closer until it forced Sousuke into a frantic sprint back down the path, towards the last shred of familiar landscape in sight.

* * *

Sousuke soon sat shivering in the hollowed trunk of some moss-covered behemoth in the mountainside, drenched in rain and the acrid smell of sweat that clung to his skin as persistently as his wet clothes had, at least until he stripped them off and hung them on nearby branches to dry. The summer drizzle stopped as abruptly as it had come, for which Sousuke was glad, yet there was no relief in the clear twilight sky that now flashed its crescent moon grin at him, obviously jeering at his impotent rage. Having run down the way he had come, he excepted – well, hoped – to trace his way back to the resort, but instead he found himself in an area twisted beyond recognition by nightfall. A bramble of shadows surrounded him on all sides. Had he no restraint, Sousuke would have screamed in anger.

_Just whose brilliant idea was it to go on a training camp to Shikoku Island and do fartlek in the goddamn mountains anyway?!_

He twitched to a halt in his train of thought, blinked, then slapped a hand to his face with a groan, dragging his fingers down in a trail of thin red marks.

 _Of course it was Rin’s_ , he heaved a bitter sigh. Rin had always been a hopeless romantic, even more so than Sousuke himself was just plain hopeless. With an allotted budget that put most sports clubs to shame, even on a national level, the idea of a cross-country sojourn into the untouched wilderness of Shikoku Island was simply too much temptation for the likes of “Captain” Matsuoka.

Sousuke internally scoffed at the title. Well, _Captain_ Matsuoka could do him a favor and haul his ass up this godforsaken mountain and get Sousuke down from here. _After all…_

_. . . It’s been hours…_

His fists clenched, then crumbled by his sides, his features growing painfully blank.

Why hadn’t Rin come looking for him?

Weren’t they friends…?

 ** _Snap out of it_** , he growled at himself the next moment, grinding his teeth in a flash of cold determination. Even if he could never be as special as _Nanase_ , he had to believe that Rin was going to look for him once he realized Sousuke was gone. Hell, Rin might be searching for him right now, calling to Sousuke unheard and crying in frustration, he always was such an easy crier… but Sousuke didn’t want Rin to cry.

Not over him. Not over anyone, ever again.

He gritted his teeth in defiance. Rin was coming. He _had_ to be. All Sousuke had to do until Rin got there was persevere in this horrible jungle… and if that was what it took to survive, Sousuke would face God and walk backwards into Hell.

…Or, stay inside the hollow of the tree and wait. No sense moving around if he wanted to be found. This was fine, too. This was _just fine._

Sousuke closed his eyes and drew a deep, shuddering breath through his nose. The stench of sweat clung to his nostrils like a thousand shrieking bats.

* * *

Resolved to stay in one place, Sousuke waited and waited, but after what felt like an eternity of huddling inside the hollow, his stomach and mind slowly shredded by ravenous hunger, he stumbled out of that gouged tree and fell upon his knees, grazing like cattle on clumps of emerald grass. He masticated furiously, neck straining to swallow what felt like knots of chewed-up string, and when he could take no more, he set upon the pallid fruit of the forest in desperation, tearing it in plump chunks off the bark of dying trees. And all the while Sousuke ate, he felt a million eyes gaze upon him in gleeful malice, that star-strewn twilight sky with its crescent moon grin.

“ _Stop mocking me, Moon!_ ” he howled at the cosmos, saliva spraying from his stuffed mouth in all directions.

The Moon ignored him. _Typical._

* * *

After a while, abandoned in that harsh wilderness, Sousuke finally lost track of time, as if the cobweb of his universe had ruptured and began to unravel strand by ethereal strand. Minutes oozed down into the great septic tank of his mind uncounted, and swelled into a cesspool of dreadful solitude. In his rare moments of desperation and purpose, Sousuke continued to plunge his hands into the sewage of his wasted hours, but time gushed from the cracks of his grasping fingers and flowed away from him like sand. In a vicious cycle of constant repetition, his memory eventually blurred into wicked fog, where few moments congealed into substance that he could later recall with any clarity.

But, perhaps, it all started with lighting that primordial fire.

A thousand sparks must have flown into the air until he managed to ignite his makeshift hearth of stones and dead branches, but once he did, Sousuke was convinced that his fire would burn till the end of the world. He must have made the journey back and forth a hundred times, feeding the fledgling flames with brittle wood and scented herbs until they roared into the sky like a tiger, clipping at the darkness with teeth and claws ablaze. In the embrace of its aromatic smoke that whispered a million secrets in hot voices, Sousuke’s cheeks dampened with the brine of salty tears. Hoarse and tongue-tied, he began to utter praise to the gods, as many as he could count on his fingers, and at last broke into a crude, improvised dance to the fervent rhythm of his heart, a dance he repeated afterwards a great many times more.

His mesmerizing movements, the sharp sweeps of his arms and the thundering of his soggy sneakers against the ground soon drew the creatures of night to Sousuke, come to watch the human horror in awe and trepidation as he cavorted around in his barbaric dance. None dared join him around the fire. Even the wolves, bravest of the lot, stood shuddering or frozen as Sousuke planted his feet and raised his arms to the sky, his limbs soaring upward like antlers that wanted to gut the heavens. He cast a fearsome shadow over the frightened onlookers, his eyes glinting with the promise of power beyond imagination… and at that moment, a single fox shuffled forward on trembling feet, bowed to him, and whispered,

_With your strength, you might even defeat the great black bear._

Sousuke stared at it bewildered. The fox’s eyes seemed to entreat him.

 _Find the sika deer_ , it whispered once more, _and you will rule this mountain._

And with that, the creatures vanished.

* * *

_Find the sika deer…_

_…you might even defeat the great black bear._

The notion wormed itself all too quickly into Sousuke’s mind, driven like an iron nail into softened wood. The fox was right, he had to find the sika deer. There was simply no other way: only by defeating the great black bear would Mount Ishizuchi release Sousuke from his cruel imprisonment. Only then would his savage soul find peace, returned once more to the bosom of civilization, _to Rin_ … and so Sousuke set out on his quest to find the sika deer.

He was not alone in his long and arduous trek across the mountainside. The fox that had come to him that fateful night continued to appear just as Sousuke thought he might lose his way, its bright red tail shimmering in the light like some benevolent Will o’ the Wisp that at last lured Sousuke into a secluded glen. There frolicked the sika deer in their freckled coats, bucks with antlers like fossil branches and does dancing on their thin, delicate legs, digging the tips of their petal hooves playfully into the turf. Sousuke approached them and spread his arms to either side in greeting, curling them towards the skies like shapely tusks, but the bucks merely laughed and the does sneered at his misshapen, crownless head.

 _Your head is round like wasp nests and you have no antlers. We do not care for you. Be gone_ , the bucks said with a haughty flick of their tails, and Sousuke’s vision bled crimson in humiliation.

 _Do not be disheartened,_ whispered the fox behind him. _Come with me._

Sousuke’s shoulders trembled with rage. Could gazes kill, that stormy look in his eyes would have rained locusts and hellfire upon the glen. But the searing inferno of his heart remained sealed from the world, and so he turned to follow the fox, which led its seething charge to a remote cluster of blackened trees.

After setting one foot into the small clearing hidden by thick veils of rotten bark, Sousuke fell to his knees in reverence. There, on a stretch of barren ground rested an enormous, gleaming deer skull, its surface almost unnaturally pure as if it had never worn either flesh or skin. The pearly hollows of its sockets locked into Sousuke’s eyes and a surge of raw energy shot through him, bristling the ridges of his spine in visceral recognition of the life that once dwelled within.

To his side, the fox lifted its paw and gestured to the skull.

 _Become one with the fallen King, and you will reign over the sika deer_ , it whispered to him. Unable to resist his destiny, Sousuke reached out his hand.

The lump in his throat soared, then plummeted as he lifted the skull into the air and Sousuke closed his eyes, missing by mere seconds, the hysterical grin that stretched the fox’s face grim and wide.

* * *

After a great struggle between the will of the fallen king and his own, Sousuke rose from a sea of mud on trembling limbs. From his head sprouted mighty antlers, the antlers of the king, but even under that crushing weight, he straightened and arched his head forward. The fox now stood at a distance, eyeing him with a guarded look.

 _Come_ , it beckoned, and Sousuke, reborn as the uncrowned King, followed it back to the glen, where the sika deer frolicked in great indifference of the unholy union that had taken place in the clearing. Now Sousuke approached them anew, his antlers stretching towards the sun. Silence fell upon the glen.

And then a shrill, unearthly cry: the terrified howls of the sika deer. The lesser bucks trembled and threw themselves on the ground, limbs wriggling like the legs of dying insects. The does shuddered and sank to their knees, while fawns stumbled in the grass wailing for their mothers, who remained shackled in place as if bewitched by the menace that was heading towards them with booming steps. One by one, the frenetic alphas charged towards the apparition to defend their herd, heads poised and antlers flying through the air like elfin lances, but an enraged Sousuke trampled them all to the ground.

* * *

When Sousuke felled the last buck, a stupor came over the glen, pierced only by the glowing eyes of the fox and the glint of its razor grin… and then, little by little, the herd dragged their hooves and rose feebly from the ground. Humbled alphas now bowed their heads to Sousuke, then retreated – slowly, carefully – towards the trees. Trembling lesser bucks came bleating allegiance, loyalty, servitude with watery eyes. Eager does strutted forward and offered themselves in the hopes of powerful young, but Sousuke shook his antlered head.

“I don’t want your bodies,” he told them, frustrated. “I just want to defeat the great black bear.”

 _We shall summon him_ , replied the alphas. _We shall cheer for you_ , promised the lesser bucks. _We shall make a crown of flowers for your head_ , offered the does.

“Okay,” shrugged Sousuke, who wanted no cheering or flowers on his head. After so many hardships, after so much time spent a prisoner of the mountain, nothing could sate him but the spilled blood of the great black bear upon his brow.

* * *

While the alpha bucks dashed off towards the cave of the great black bear, Sousuke’s restless feet spurred him into another turbulent dance in the glen. Awestruck does watched him in adoration as he dashed round and round, then began scattering sweet herbs in his path and moaning in his ears the song of the sika deer. Behind them, their fawn trembled in terror, too faint of heart to look, but the lesser bucks gathered to gawk at the fury of the uncrowned king, drinking in his vision until it trickled into their marrow and filled them with virile mirth. They even began to wiggle their hooves off the ground, in their own quiet dance.

Until, at length, the great black bear came.

It approached like a storm cloud, slow and thundering across the glen, dark as the blackest night and claws like great ivory hooks. In its eyes flashed the purest malice; its mouth stank of the stench of death.

Sousuke stood his ground in defiance. The great black bear huffed, then hauled its flat paws towards the sky.

 _Maggot of the gray stone forest, I put a curse on you_ , roared the bear, jabbing an angry claw at Sousuke. _A curse upon all who oppose me, that they may never taste water, honey, or the sweet tang of deer flesh on their tongue again!_

“Kill me if you can,” snarled Sousuke, and then he charged towards the great black bear.

Two forces collided in a clash of antlers and claws, limb against limb, struggling in circles equally matched, until Sousuke finally found hold and dug his feet into the earth. The bear roared in his vice grip, no more in threat but fear and pleading mercy. Sousuke’s face ran wet with blood. Whether it was his or the bear’s, he couldn’t tell.

The next moment, he felt a sting, as if a humming bird had plunged its beak deep into his thigh. Sousuke cried out in surprise, but his voice ebbed away as a dull ripple of poison coursed through his veins, severing his legs until Sousuke dropped to the ground with the taste of blood on his lips.

His eyes rolled upward. He faintly glimpsed the shapeless form of the great black bear.

The world

_went_

_**blank.** _

* * *

Rin sat collapsed into a plastic chair in the hospital corridor, face buried in his hands. A few meters away, police interrogated Sugimoto, advisor of the Samezuka Swimming Club, and a trembling elderly park ranger who kept wringing his hands as though he was trying to churn blood from the folds of his leathered skin.

“He aaah, he had uuh, a deer skull? On his head,” the park ranger mumbled in a thick accent to one of the officers, who scribbled down his confession furiously into a weathered notebook. “I reckon he uh, he stuck it on his head with all that mud… And he was runnin’ around half naked, screamin’ at the deer? And then he saw the bear and he, he darn suplexed that bear in front of mah very eyes! Tha’s when I shot ‘im. With mah, mah tranquilizer gun. He had it coming. Must’ve been on drugs..!”

A moment later, a doctor stepped out of the nearby emergency room. Rin twitched and whipped his head up. The doctor shook his head in exasperation.

“We just finished performing gastric lavage. In the last eight hours, Yamazaki-kun ingested approximately two hundred grams of inedible herbs and over one thousand grams of psychoactive mushrooms. Anyone else would have overdosed within hours, but he should be able to leave the hospital in two days.”

Rin slumped back against the wall, his eyes dull and wide. Around the corner, a familiar melody grazed his ears: Mikoshiba Momotarou’s ringtone.

“Nii-chan?!” cried Momo, the phone glued to his ear.

 _“Just read your text_ ,” came Seijuurou’s voice from the other side. “ _I knew Matsuoka was wild, but your training camp just beat ours from my first year!”_

“What happened then, Nii-chan?” asked Momo in excited whispers.

 _“I can’t tell you in public_ ,” said his brother, his voice lower than before, “ _but just know that there was blood everywhere, and it still wasn’t as wild as this shit.”_

* * *

When Sousuke finally regained consciousness, his eyes blinked open to a sprawl of white over his body, and his only thought was that snow had never felt so warm or pure as it did covering his aching, tired bones. And yet, he did not feel _entirely_ dead. Something pressed down on his right arm enough to make his shoulder tingle and Sousuke slowly rolled his head to the side, to see an angel of death hunched over him, fast asleep. Sousuke almost felt guilty for making him wait so long. What lovely, reddish hair he had… sort of like…

“Rin…?” he breathed, lifting his left hand – oh, how heavy it felt – across the sheets and jabbing a finger into that veil of tousled hair. He heard a groan, then a sigh, and as the angel lifted his head, Sousuke’s eyes widened in gladness so acute it nearly broke his heart. “ _Rin!_ ”

“S..Sousuke..?” mumbled Rin as he wiped his eyes and straightened in his seat, then gasped in relief at the sight of his friend staring at him. In the light, he looked strangely pale to Sousuke, except for the dark circles under his eyes. “You’re awake! I’m so glad..!”

“Rin…” whispered Sousuke, his eyes large and almost childlike. “I thought I’d never see you again.” He paused and let his eyes fall, features hardening until his voice thickened into tar. “Why didn’t you come looking for me, Rin? Why did you leave me behind…?”

“ _What?_ ” blurted Rin, so insultingly clueless it made Sousuke’s blood boil.

“You never came after me and left me on that mountain!” He began a little louder this time, not noticing how Rin’s cheeks started regaining their color at an alarming rate. “I spent weeks trying to find my way back, and I never once—”

“ _What the hell are you talking about?!_ ” snapped Rin with gleaming eyes, stunning Sousuke into baffled silence. “We’ve been searching for you all night and all morning! You’ve only been gone for like twelve hours!”

“What…?” mumbled Sousuke, gazing down at his sheets in disbelief. “But… it felt like I’ve been stuck on that mountain for months.”

“That’s because you ate poisonous shit and got higher than a fucking kite!” interrupted Rin, who in turn was interrupted by a sudden sob that stretched his voice thin and strained. Tears burst down his cheeks unbidden and dripped down his chin, staining the sheets. “You scared me to death, man…”

Sousuke stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head with a soft, sad smile.

“I knew you would cry,” he whispered, almost apologetically. Rin punched his arm in reply, then lowered his head to stifle another sob. Sousuke hesitated, then ever so gently lifted his arm and wrapped it around Rin’s shoulders, pulling him into a tight hug. Rin choked against his chest. Sousuke gave his shoulder a soothing rub.

“There, there,” he said quietly. Rin’s shoulders twitched.

“Sousuke…” he rasped, just barely able to lift his head under the weight of that hulking arm.

“What?” asked Sousuke, his eyes unusually tender. Rin snorted and choked on his own saliva.

“You smell awful,” he whined through his stuffy nose. Sousuke’s cheeks rusted red.

“Shut up,” he muttered and whipped his arm away, pulling it into an embarrassed cross over his chest. “It’s just sweat.”

**Author's Note:**

> I would now like to thank those without whom I would not have written this story at all.
> 
> First and foremost, I want to thank Daxii, who first suggested I join the exchange she planned with several of her friends, and then gently, very kindly, and painstakingly paved my way until I became comfortable enough to sign up. Without all your kind effort, I would not have dared join because of my anxiety and having so little confidence in myself. Thank you so much for being such a stellar moderator and an all around excellent friend. I also want to thank CharmingStrangeness and tsunasty @ tumblr for being my kind beta readers on such short notice, bless you.
> 
> Additionally, I want to thank everyone who liked and reblogged my silly Sousuke posts on Tumblr, since you all gave me courage to note down at my sign-up that I would gladly write some more of Sousuke’s misadventures; and every person who gave me writing-related comments and compliments during these trying times. Every little bit helped, whether it cheered me up, gave me courage, or planted a new idea in my head.
> 
> Finally, I owe it to _The Penguin Book of Witches & Warlocks: Tales of Black Magic, Old and New_ (compiled by Marvin Kaye) that I finally found the inspiration to write this piece. I knew from the start where I wanted to go with this prompt, but I lacked experience and couldn’t find the words to paint the atmosphere, and this book turned out to be the answer.
> 
> One more note: Don’t ask what happened at Sei’s first-year training camp. I promised not to tell. Happy New Year, everyone!


End file.
